How much longer could I drag my feet?

I looked at the clock. I was supposed to pick up Alicia in about a half of an hour. My suit pants were still wrinkled, I was still wandering around my apartment in a towel, my hair wet from the shower.

I walked over to the counter and picked up the card my mom had brought by for the brides.

“Dane, you have to give either a gift from their registry, or some money. At least enough to cover the cost of the meal.”

“How the hell am I supposed to know how much my meal is costing them? Is it on the invitation somewhere?”

I picked up the invitation and flipped it over, trying to figure this little roadblock out.

Mom rolled her eyes at me, and muttered something about failing as a mother, and me needing a woman in my life to handle the important details.

“No, they don’t tell you upfront. That would be in poor taste. You have to figure it out based on the venue and the time of night.”

I watched her as she mulled over the invitation.

“Okay, so this is a country club in a nice area, and the wedding is at five o’clock, so it will be a full sit-down dinner most likely. At the very least you should give fifty dollars. I would say one hundred maximum.”

I looked at the invitation, trying to figure out how she got all of that information just from looking at this one sided five by six-inch piece of cardstock.

“Okay…”

“Trust me, son. And you’d better not screw up getting Mari back, you clearly need her.”

I pulled a handful of twenties out of my billfold, and put them in the card, sealing it up.

Mom had coordinated this evening like a sting operation, so I knew that I would have to keep on schedule or I’d never hear the end of it.

I moved much quicker to get ready and managed to be at Alicia’s condo in twenty-seven minutes. I may have broken a few laws on the way, but I was on schedule. When Alicia reported in to her mother, I would remain firmly in my mom’s good graces.

“Hey, Dane.”

Alicia slid in the car, nervously sliding a piece of hair behind her ear.

Something was different. I couldn’t figure it out, but it was really weird.

“Hi, Alicia, thanks for agreeing to this. I’m sorry if our moms have put us in a weird place.”

She gave a forced laugh and shrugged it off.

“No worries. I understand that my job is to help you make the love of your life jealous as hell.”

She didn’t seem upset by it. Was this the same person who had been circling me like a cat on the prowl just months ago?

I looked closer and realized that her face had a softness to it that I’d never seen. Without sounding like a poetic douche, she almost looked… vulnerable.

“You okay, Alicia?”

She exhaled. The type of exhale you hear when someone is unloading more than just momentary stress off of themselves. This was the type that was years in the making.

“Honestly, no. But I’m getting there. A lot of shit has been dredged up lately, things that I thought were long buried. Lies from long ago that I thought were truth have been uncovered and I’m not dealing as well as I should. Have you ever had everything you ever believed turned upside down, and suddenly you’re left not even knowing who you are?”

Yikes.

“No, I really can’t say I know what that feels like. But if you ever need a friend to talk to, I’m here for you.”

I may have emphasized the word ‘friend’ too much, because she cringed when I said it.

“About that. Dane, I owe you a huge apology. You said no. You said no in every fucking way possible, but I refused to listen to you, and kept coming on stronger. As a result, I lost your friendship, I lost your business, but most importantly, I lost your respect. I don’t know what turned me into that hard, stone cold bitch that I’d become… well, that’s a lie. I do know, but I guess I had no idea the impact it had had on me, because that just became who I was. I should have backed off. You were absolutely right in pushing me away. I didn’t want a relationship, I just wanted to take from you. I wanted to use you in every way possible, and then walk away. You deserve better than that. So, I’m sorry.”

She was somewhat hunched over in the seat while talking to me, not making eye contact, but every word that came from her mouth was filled with pain and regret.

I didn’t know what to say.

I mean, nothing she said was a lie, she came on too strong and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. She’d made everything uncomfortable and weird.

But the fact that she recognized it and apologized was a big deal.

So, what did a person say to that?

Nothing.

I reached over and quickly squeezed her hand. She gave me a grateful look, knowing exactly what meaning was loaded into that small gesture.

“So, friendship. If you need it, you’ve got it.”

I was a little wary, but knew in my gut it was the right path to take. Her royal bitchiness had been escalating for so long, it would be hard for me to just accept a quick speech and not still have a shield up between us. But looking at her, seeing the pain and defeat in her eyes hurt me a little bit. The same hurt a person experiences when someone they used to be friends with goes through a rough patch, even if they’d not been close to you in years. You hurt for the person you used to know and the relationship you used to have.

“Thanks, Dane. I may have to take you up on that. But right now, my goal is to get through the night without breaking down. I won’t lie, I’ve been a mess these past few weeks. Emotions that had been bottled up for over a decade all surfaced at once, and I’m not able to keep them in check. But I’ll do my best to not embarrass you.”

I smiled sadly at her, a pang of compassion cutting through the distrust.

“Girl, looking like you do tonight, you’ll have men lining up to fight me for you, so I don’t think you have to worry about embarrassing yourself.”

I winked, getting the first genuine laugh out of her all night. Actually, listening to the music of her laughter, it was probably the first genuine laugh I’d heard from her in years.

It was almost as if I was meeting Alicia for the first time.

“So, what’s the plan?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. This will be my first time seeing her since she walked away months ago. I fucked up, but it was a really stupid fuck up. Like, she may have overreacted a bit, but I knew that would happen, with her trust issues and her past and everything. I was told to give her space, by her very best friend, who happens to be the bride.”

She nodded along, absorbing my words.

“Okay, so good to know. I just have to figure out what part to play. I don’t think draping myself over you like a cheap throw is the right path, it will just make her believe that you moved on from her and it’s over. Honestly, I’m not sure the ‘make her jealous’ is the best path. Why’d you go along with it?”

I laughed.

“Um, so I sort of didn’t. My mom was busy texting your mom, and didn’t listen to me when I told her it was a bad idea. Next thing you know, I had a ‘plus one’ for the wedding. Phoenix was pissed.”

She shook her head.

“I bet he was getting his rocks off at the thought of lesbians, wasn’t he?”

Sometimes, I forgot what it was like to have a friend who knew your family. She knew Nix. She was the only one who could fully understand my brother’s disappointment.

“Oh, my god. You’d have thought that I’d kicked his puppy with his reaction that I had no interest in inviting him to the wedding. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen, I sure as hell don’t expect them to eat each other out at the reception. Well, not in front of everyone, anyway.”

“Ew, dude.”

Her face was screwed up in a look of disgust. I just grinned at her, enjoying her discomfort a little bit.

We pulled into the parking lot, and I wedged my beat-up old sedan between two cars that gleamed with polish, poise and dollar signs.

I sighed, thinking of my old Honda. I could afford better. Two successful cafes and now running the family company had definitely padded my bank account, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the impracticality of a luxury car to drive around in Boston. One, the weather really sucked in the winter. And rock salt on the roads beat the crap out of cars. Two, potholes. Three, the insurance because the car would just beg thieves to take a chance would be astronomical.

Nah, I’m still with old trusty rusty. You couldn’t kill a Honda, and no one wanted to steal them when they looked like mine did. I gave the dash a little pat, so my car wouldn’t think I was thinking badly of it. It was a guy thing.

“Well, let’s do this.”

I walked around to her side of the car and opened the door for her. She smiled up at me and then started walking towards the entrance. She didn’t make a move to hold my hand or put more weight on being my date for the evening than she should, which definitely helped me relax a little.

However, butterflies of nerves were apparently going ten rounds in my stomach, because I felt like I was going to throw up when I opened the door to the country club. This was it. This was my chance.

I had no idea what I was going to say to her, when and if I got a moment with her. But whatever I did, I needed to get it right.

We slipped into an aisle and took our seat moments before a harp started playing at the front. The room wasn’t packed, maybe about seventy people came. Seventy people smiling with such happiness and love for the couple.

The quiet that came over everyone let me know that everything was starting. I turned and looked toward the double doors I had entered moments ago, and my heart stopped.

Everything stopped.

Time stopped.

All I saw in the room was perfection in a skimpy silver dress that left little to the imagination. I saw my future walking towards me, and for a half of a second, I saw her in a white gown and a veil.

“Breathe, Dane.”

Alicia’s voice came over my shoulder, whispered into my ear.

I took a deep gasping breath as she walked by. I didn’t think she saw me, but that was okay. It would give me time to get used to her, to being this close. To feeling the stars realigned.

She turned toward the door, a huge, open smile on her face as the traditional wedding song started and the two brides made their way up the aisle separately, escorted by their fathers.

Both wore beautiful white gowns and looked gorgeous, but when I turned to face the front, looking at my goddess standing up there, I realized that they paled in comparison to my Mari.

Watching her there, her smile, those eyes, those curves… my gut clenched, and my balls got a little tighter. I would have to work really hard to not focus on how much I needed her, or this was going to be a very uncomfortable night.

She turned to face the front, and I saw how perfectly her ass curved under the silver material of the dress she wore, which caused my dick to harden immediately.

Fuck.

Me.